Having irate clients sent your way

I had an interesting situation develop yesterday. I was communicating back and forth with a web designer that needed some freelance work for a client. After we laid everything out that needed to be done and prices and payment he just sends the client straight to me.

I ended up in a long distance phone call for almost an hour with his irate client that was sure that he had shafted her. It turns out he had not lived up to alot of his agreement with her. His site design was really nice but promised modifications to the code had not been made. To top it all of, he expected her to carry the bill for the freelance work.

I did get her calmed down and talking rationally but she was ready to move her business out of the designers hands. She wanted to know if I could help her from now on.

While I have no problem with taking care of her for programming things I'm not sure it quite feels right to go through with moving her site to one of my servers and taking over the management of it. It almost seems as if I would be violating some secret law.

Anyone else been in a similar situation. If she drops him totally then I might consider picking her up as a client but I'm still not sure.

I mean, the guy is surely not going to refer anyone else to you if this one leaves right after he does.

So the question is, which is the more correct and valuable business decision in the long term? How many referrals could this guy send versus how many could this client? How much negative WOM could the guy send, versus how much positive she's likely to present.

There's an opportunity perhaps to mediate. To help maintain the relationship between all these parties. In doing that, he would definitely be likely to send more referrals in future as he may already know he's losing this client. There could be a real win-win-win if mediation is possible.

I would probably be entirely honest and forthright with this client about the decision. Point out that the guy she's dealing with was good enough to make the referral - good to you both in that respect. At least then you can discuss the issue, and she may well sympathise.

Any business, including hers, is only ever as good as its supply chain. Whether that chain is supplying materials, products, or leads - the supply chain is the basic support of any business.

After we laid everything out that needed to be done and prices and payment he just sends the client straight to me.

Giving you direct access to an unhappy client was a demonstration of trust. I wonder if the client has been problematic all along, or if the designer was looking for a positive way to deal with a bad relationship?

Unhappy people have evangelistic tendencies, and negative word of mouth can be passed on more than positive. You've got potential for negative WOM from both client and designer.

Referrals and outsourcing are a goodwill exchange for all concerned, if well managed. Good, clean communication like what Ammon laid out will be key to a positive outcome.

Thanks for the replies and the advice. I pretty much said as much to the customer. I'm not sure where the relationship with the designer will go. The job is done and the client is very happy. She wants me to do more work for her but as the designer allowed me 100% I'll probably make contact with him and keep communication totally open if I can. He can't code so hopefully he'll appreciate her shifting that type of work my way.

Another thing I thought of... many times I've seen web designers that retain control of domain names and even total control over the code sometimes. If I tried to step in and offer her hosting on another server and other services it might turn into a nightmare trying to get control of the domain and such.

LOl She ended up ditching the designer anyways. I gave it my best shot but I guess they were bound for divorce. She seems fairly easy to please but I'm always wary with things like that. I can see where the designer didn't hold up to his end of the bargain but still.

She is working with yet another designer. I had told her that design wise I fall into the category of inept. Very interesting situation.

I'm hoping nothing else comes of it. I feel bad for the guy but I did try to keep his business for him. I even went as far as asking his permission for other programming work that the client wanted me to do. I haven't heard back from him at all. As long as I don't take a reputation hit for it I guess. I could have hosted her site and the works but I didn't for his sake. Man I need some ice cream.